Flavor is the sensory impression of a food or of another substance and is determined mainly by the chemical senses of taste and smell. The “trigeminal senses,” which detect chemical irritants in the mouth and throat as well as temperature and texture, are important to the overall Gestalt of flavor perception. The flavor of a food can be altered with natural or artificial flavorants, which affect these senses. Flavor compounds are sold to the food and beverage industries for use in consumer products such as prepared foods, beverages, dairy, food and confectionery products.
Flavorants are defined as substances that give another substance flavor, altering the characteristics of the solute, causing it to become sweet, sour, tangy, or the like. Of the three chemical senses, smell is the main determinant of a foods flavor. While the taste of food is limited to sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and savory (umami)—the basic tastes—the smells of a food are potentially limitless. A food's flavor, therefore, can be easily altered by changing its smell while keeping its taste similar. Nowhere is this better exemplified than in artificially flavored jellies, soft drinks and candies, which, while made of bases with a similar taste, have dramatically different flavors due to the use of different scents or fragrances. The flavorings of commercially produced food products are generally created by flavorists.
Although the terms “flavoring” or “flavorant” in common language denotes the combined chemical sensations of taste and smell, the same terms are usually used in the fragrance and flavors industry to refer to edible chemicals and extracts that alter the flavor of food and food products through the sense of smell. Due to the high cost or unavailability of natural flavor extracts, most commercial flavorants are nature-identical, which means that they are the chemical equivalent of natural flavors but are chemically synthesized rather than being extracted from the source materials. Flavorants are added to beverages, food items, and to health care products (e.g., toothpaste, mouthwash, and the like) in much the same manner and for some of the same reasons as perfumes are added to solid substrates or to gases, namely to enhance odor or to camouflage malodors.
Fragrant formulations are added to a variety of products to deliver an odor. For example, these fragrant formulations are often added to consumer products to deliver a fresh (or clean) odor to targeted substrates (such as textiles, hard surfaces, skin, hair, and the like) and to provide an olfactory aesthetic benefit. They are often added to gases and to industrial products to camouflage malodors (e.g., air fresheners, candles) or added to odorless gases to facilitate detection (e.g., methane and carbon monoxide).
Substantive fragrant compositions (also known as “enduring fragrances”) are those that effectively deposit onto a substrate in, for example, a cleaning process or a food product and are detectable by the olfactory system. Persons skilled in the art of creating fragrant formulations usually have some knowledge of particular fragrant compositions that are substantive (in general, such ingredients are heavy, insoluble and non-volatile).
Fragrant compositions are often combined with other ingredients, such as solvents, to create fragrance formulations. Solvents can be used for solubilizing or compatibilizing various components in the fragrance formulation, or other ingredients useful for making a final product that meets the desired performance criteria.